In the Valleys of the Noble Beyond

by John Zada

  “I looked up and couldn’t believe what I saw—there was a Thla’thla right at the tip of the rock!” she says. “Sorry, a what on the rock?”

  “A Thla’thla. That’s the word in our language for a Sasquatch. It was crouched down with its arms hanging around its knees, which were up past its shoulders. It was brown in color and just huge. It looked just like that character in Star Trek.“

  “You mean Chewbacca? In Star Wars?”

  “That’s it. It was like a giant monkey with a human-shaped head. And it was watching us in what looked like amazement. It was leaning forward, just staring at us. And at first we were just in awe.”

  Both the boaters and the creature were frozen in shock. But then the gravity of the situation sank in. Marilyn, who had first spotted the creature, started screaming in horror, yelling hysterically at her husband to start the motor so they could escape. That surge of fright startled the animal, and it stood up. At that moment the boaters saw the creature in its full dimensions: roughly eight feet in height, with long arms, broad shoulders, and a barrel chest.

  “Its arms were so long, and its hands were so big,” Mary recalls. “It stood up and looked over its shoulder at us as it walked off. After three or four steps it was gone, into the forest.”

  The relief at seeing the animal leave turned into renewed terror when the adults realized that the girls digging clams on the beach were now in danger. Mary paints a scene of utter pandemonium, as the boaters, in an effort to alert the girls, drove their vessel at full throttle onto the beach—with the impact nearly throwing them out. They then sprinted down the shoreline yelling to the girls at the top of their lungs to get into the cabin as quickly as possible, because they’d seen a Thla’thla. Seeing the adults in hysterics, and well versed in old stories about Sasquatches, the teenagers were whipped into paroxysms of fright. Everyone fled inside.

  Safe and in the cabin, the group went over and over the details of the encounter in amazement and disbelief. Once everyone had calmed down, a few hours later, the group agreed that the creature was likely gone and wouldn’t return. As evening fell, the adults set about making dinner, while the girls climbed into the bunks in the loft area of the cabin. After dark the campers started hearing something moving through the bushes outside. They thought the smell of food had attracted a nearby bear. But whatever had come around soon crawled beneath the cabin, which was raised on stilts.

  “The floorboard has cracks in it,” Mary says. “And we were overcome by this incredible stench. You know how a dirty, wet dog smells, right? But this was like ten times stronger. It was so stink.”

  Aware of the bad smell associated with the creature, the campers concluded that the Sasquatch had returned and was now just a few feet beneath them. They became terrified. Seeking protection, the adults climbed up onto the bunks with the girls. For over an hour nobody moved, as they all listened to the animal beneath the cabin shifting around and occasionally knocking and scratching at the floor. It remained there and seemed to have no intention of going away.

  “And then Marilyn lost it again,” Mary says, chuckling. “She screamed, ‘I can’t handle this anymore! Grab the gun!’ She ordered her husband to confront the Thla’thla. So the poor guy climbs down and takes the gun out of the case. He’s literally shaking, trying to load his twenty-two. He then swings the door open—and I swear he probably had his eyes closed because he was so terrified of what would be out there—and shoots his gun into the darkness. Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang! He then slams the door, pushes the dining table against it, and piles any movable objects on top to barricade us in.” Mary, engrossed in her own story, bursts into laughter. “As if that was going to help us,” she says. “If that thing wanted to get into the cabin that night, it would have.”

  But it worked. The animal retreated from beneath the cabin, taking its rancid odor with it. At the crack of dawn, the terrified, sleepless campers took their things and piled into their boats and returned to Bella Bella.

  When I ask Mary what most sticks out in her mind about the experience, she tells me it is the creature’s face. Its expression, she says, showed no intent to harm. Instead, it revealed only an intense curiosity.

  “I think the only reason we were scared is what we learned growing up,” she says. “As kids we were told stories in which the Thla’thla—a wild woman of the woods—kidnaps children and puts them in a big basket she carries on her back. Those tales were used as cultural teachings—to teach the kids to listen to and respect their parents. And to discourage them from wandering too far off.”

  “Do you think the Sasquatch is a supernatural being?”

  “No, they’re normal flesh-and-blood creatures. The others would probably agree. I think they’re just smart and cautious animals that live deep in the woods. Nothing more.”

  In my new capacity as the impartial Sasquatch investigator, I try to be detached as I consider Mary’s story, to play the devil’s advocate, as I had done with John Bindernagel. But there are few loose strings with which to pull the story apart.

  I ask if she’s sure they hadn’t seen or smelled a bear.

  “A hundred percent,” she says.

  Did they look for tracks the next morning?

  “No.”

  Why not?

  “There was no time. We were running for our lives. Plus we knew what we’d seen.”

  I am fascinated by Mary’s story. It makes sense, concordant with all I know and have heard before about the animals: the typical crouching posture, the bad smell, the sometimes mischievous behavior. Plus, four witnesses were involved in the initial sighting. It is all too compelling.

  I go over the arguments for and against the creature’s existence in an attempt to ground myself. In doing so, I’m reminded of how intractable the debate is. On one side you have the disciples of the rational notion that anything that can’t be shown to exist physically cannot exist. On the other is the view that when something can’t be seen, or can’t be shown to exist, this doesn’t prove it’s not there. As with the scripted debates between parliamentarians, the Sisyphean back-and-forth between the two always reaches an impasse: just when one side seems to get the upper hand, the other has a comment or answer that parries it, or a maneuver to deflect it, and everyone is back to square one.

  Alvina’s place becomes a home away from home. Lots of people pass through on a daily basis. Grandchildren drop in, at any and all hours, for a snippet of conversation with their “Nan” while not so surreptitiously raiding her fridge. Friends, neighbors, and extended family make similarly unpredictable cameos, often just as Alvina is putting the finishing touches on some home cooking. Many come bearing gifts of seafood: jars of salmon, steamed crab, halibut, seaweed, or herring roe prepared with butter and garlic. Alvina giddily stashes the treasures deep in her fridge, only to share them with me later, selflessly, along with a glass of wine, on her hummingbird-graced balcony.

  My host’s generosity is not limited to the kitchen. Having an interest in my researches, she takes an active role in facilitating them, by finding stories and easing access into the community. Alvina shakes down every person who drops into her place for a Sasquatch story or for tips on whom else I might speak to. After a while, I can barely keep up with the leads. I accumulate my own dossier of reports and quickly become familiar with many of the names and places in the territory. In my mental map, and later on Google Earth, I plug tacks into every creek valley, secluded cove, clam beach, and old village site tied to the creatures. Sasquatches, if they exist, seem to be omnipresent on the coast. No island or islet is too remote. No valley is free of their potential presence.

  One night, during a backyard barbecue at the house, Alvina appears behind me and grabs my arm. “I want you to meet someone,” she says, leading me to a bonfire around which several people are seated on lawn chairs. She introduces me to her former son-in-law.

  “Tell him your Stryker Island story, Larry,” Alvina says, before smiling at me and disappearing into the dark.<
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  The tall, heavyset man in his late fifties is reluctant to speak at first but then tells me that he and his father had encountered an albino Sasquatch on the island. It happened, he said, while the two men were clam digging.

  “Suddenly, Dad came running to me, all hysterical, saying a white Sasquatch had come after him,” Larry says. “He said it was trying to protect its clams.” Larry goes silent, reliving the memory.

  “Then what happened?” I prompt him.

  “The thing chased us outta there is what,” he says. “My dad was really affected by it. He got really freaked out after. So I performed a smoke ceremony to cleanse him.”

  “Did he recover?”

  “He was, well, different after.”

  I notice a man beside us listening intently to the conversation, his stern, heavily contoured face reflecting the dim orange light coming from the embers of the fire. He is staring at me, and I turn my gaze to meet his.

  “You say you’re some kinda writer?” he interjects.

  “I am.”

  “You’re on an Indian reservation and this is the kind of thing you want to write about?” His tone is hostile.

  “It’s for a book project. I’m collecting stories—”

  “Look around you!” he says, cutting me off. “We’re hurting here! There aren’t any jobs. Groceries are expensive. Do you know how much it costs to buy a bottle of ketchup? Ten bucks! And that was back when we had ketchup! Our goddamn band store just burned down and no government is lifting a finger to help us. The next-nearest supermarket is a hundred miles away!”

  Everyone around the fire is listening now. The truth of what he’s saying dawns on me, and I suddenly feel embarrassed and a bit ashamed.

  “You come from the big city, and all you can do is ask about Sasquatches!” he says. “Sasquatch this, and Bigfoot that! I have news for you: there is no Sasquatch! It doesn’t exist! Why don’t you do everyone a favor and write about what life is like around here—and how tough things are?”

  He stands up, flicks his beer bottle into the fire, and walks away.

  Prior to my trip, people acquainted with the coast told me that I’d face an adjustment period. That things work differently here. That the pace and tempo of coastal life are radically at odds with those of the city. I find that to be true. Life in Bella Bella is less structured around clock time. Outside of official business, there is less emphasis on setting up and holding to firm appointments. Plans with others have an almost hypothetical quality to them, until they actually happen. When I complain to Alvina and others that some scheduled meetings don’t come to pass, they all tell me to forgo plans and just go look for people, show up unannounced. More often than not, they add, I’ll find them. And experience bears that out.

  The rhythms of life here are also different. People are more relaxed. They walk slowly and tread lightly. Dialogue is easygoing and peppered with natural pauses. It is also not hampered by loud ambient noises—traffic, construction, music, and the ruckus of crowds—that compel people in cities to raise their voices unconsciously. More than once, embarrassingly, I have to ask people to repeat themselves because I can’t hear their quiet words.

  Because of their hard opposition to the Big Oil projects on the coast, the Heiltsuk have garnered a reputation, a stereotype even, among those who don’t know them, for being naturally antagonistic. But I find Bella Bellans to be friendly, open-minded, and extroverted. Nearly every driver who passes me in the street waves. People strolling by on the road also say hello and ask how I’m doing. If a conversation is struck up, and I mention that I’m staying with Alvina, who is widely respected, there is an instant happy glimmer of recognition. My interest in Sasquatch further bridges any real or perceived chasms. I quickly gain the nickname “Sasquatch Man,” which I wrongly believed was Alvina’s coinage and usage alone.

  But just when I think I’ve reached acceptance in the community, I’m reminded of the limits of being an outsider. Rumors reach my ears that some people in town think I’m an informer, trying to infiltrate the community to report on any threatening activist opposition to those Big Oil megaprojects. My supposed affiliations vary depending on the person harboring the suspicion: the police, the government, the Big Oil companies. Most of the rumors have me working for Enbridge, the Canadian multinational energy-transportation company, whose Northern Gateway pipeline program the Heiltsuk and other First Nations are determined to stop at any cost. The whole “Sasquatch getup,” I am told, is believed to be a clever ruse to help me gain access to the community.*

  One Saturday night, I head to the Fisherman’s Bar and Grill in nearby Shearwater—the main watering hole in the area. Dance-floor revelers bounce to a live band playing 1980s covers, while scruffy-looking commercial fishermen from out of town, wild-eyed and worn by time, brood idly in the corners, nursing their beers.

  I grab a drink at the bar and get invited to a game of pool with some new friends I’ve made. Sasquatch almost invariably comes up, and throughout the night people share names of contacts and places related to Bigfoot sightings. I jot down the small leads and anecdotes in my notebook.

  Within days word gets back to me that I’ve acquired a new nickname: “The Notetaker.” And I hear from some that my scribbling in the bar that night has aroused further suspicions. Perhaps I’m reporting on certain people?

  In the more conspiracy-prone Middle East, I faced similar allegations—the often good-humored, half-joking quips about espionage made by local friends and colleagues that are de rigueur in that part of the world. As in the Middle East, the history here of damaging interactions with exploitative outsiders makes the reflex understandable. But it also makes me wonder what would happen if a critical mass of suspicion were to gather around me. I do my best to shake these thoughts and redirect my attention to an important and promising meeting.

  If anyone knows the mazelike interstices of the Great Bear Rainforest, it’s environmentalist Ian McAllister. Originally from Victoria, the award-winning photographer, filmmaker, and author of several books on the Great Bear is also the director of Pacific Wild—a coastal conservation group he cofounded with his wife, Karen, in 2008. Ian was part of a clique of environmentalists who came to prominence during the Vancouver Island anti-logging protests of the 1980s and 90s and went on to wage the campaign that eventually created the Great Bear Rainforest in 2006. He also coined the area’s name.

  Ian’s famous, jaw-dropping photos of coastal wolves and grizzlies come at the price of weeks alone in the bush, often sitting hidden with his camera in estuary grasses or in stands of old growth—endlessly watching and waiting. Much of his work takes place in some of the areas where sightings of Sasquatches have been reported.

  Ian’s forty-six-foot catamaran and field operations center, Habitat, docked at his Denny Island home, is strewn with diving equipment and gizmos. He and an assistant are on board packing duffel bags. Sunburned from his time out on the water, the forty-nine-year-old, with his curly red hair and freckles, projects the image of a relaxed surfer. But there’s also something imposing and brazen about his manner.

  “We’re gearing up for a multiday expedition to monitor a pod of fin whales that appeared on our remote cameras,” Ian says.

  At a table covered in marine charts, he finishes telling me about his involvement in the anti-logging protests at Clayoquot Sound, on the western coast of Vancouver Island, in the late 1980s and early ‘90s. Those demonstrations, known as the War in the Woods, received worldwide media attention and propelled Ian into his current role, fighting for the Great Bear.

  “After Vancouver Island, we thought for sure that when the public saw this place, it would only take a few years to protect it. But it didn’t work out that way. It took some really heavy hands to get the government to even recognize that this was a special place. They spent an incredible amount of time trying to convince the public that it didn’t exist.”

  “In what sense?”

  “In an official sense. They’re on r
ecord as saying, ‘There is no such place as the Great Bear Rainforest.’ So we responded, ‘Well, then there’s no such place as the Great Barrier Reef—or the Grand Canyon.’ People have names for places. And they’re not necessarily gazetted or legal names. Fortunately, the idea that Canada was destroying this fabled wilderness full of spirit bears, salmon, and towering trees in order to sell products to Europe and the United States was totally unacceptable to the public,” he says. “And so we managed to force an agreement.”

  “It’s a big achievement.”

  “Yeah, except we’re now back to square one.”

  “The pipeline?” I say, referring to the Northern Gateway project.

  “Pipelines. Plural. Several have been proposed. They effectively want to drive hundreds of supertankers carrying liquefied natural gas and bitumen condensate right through the very heart of this rain forest. The impact would be catastrophic if one of these fully laden tankers slammed into a reef. Statistically it will happen.”

  “What do you plan to do?”

  “What we’ve done before. Dig in. Fight till the end.”

  “You have your work cut out for you.”

  “Well, there are a few conservationists, like myself, roaming about. We’re hardly an army. And the communities here are some of the smallest and most isolated in Canada. If you consider the sympathetic and highly motivated provincial and federal governments, the resources of China, and every major oil company in the world that’s heavily invested in the Alberta tar sands, it’s pretty hard to come up with a bigger level of opposition. It’s a pure David-and-Goliath situation.”

  Ian turns to look at his assistant, and I can tell he is impatiently gauging how much time he has left to give me. “So, you’re here for some other information,” he says, moving the discussion forward.

  I tell Ian about my interest in Sasquatch. I feel almost silly doing so, in light of the seriousness of the conversation we’ve just had. I expect Ian, a de facto biologist and a practical, hands-on man, to make a dour or mocking face. But he maintains his well-honed professional, almost diplomatic, composure. He seems to mull his next words before speaking.